S.F. Giants' Bruce Bochy has humble approach

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A few years ago, when he was managing the San Diego Padres, Bruce Bochy wrapped up a day game in Detroit and then scored choice seats to see basketball's Pistons. As his wife, Kim, recalls it, he was so thrilled to be courtside that he phoned home and told one of his two sons, "I'm on TV!"

"Dad," Greg Bochy replied. "I see you on TV all the time."

It's the kind of story people tell about Bruce Bochy, even as they explain how the down-to-earth skipper - who came to the Giants during the closing months of the Barry Bonds circus - steadied the team and steered it into the playoffs after a six-season drought.

The 55-year-old Bochy is a man of few words and little excess in a flashy sports world. "Boch," as most friends call him, doesn't own a car, and his wife buys his clothes. The day before last week's playoff opener against the Atlanta Braves, she said, she had to "twist his arm" to get a haircut.

A humble approach to life, friends and colleagues say, is one reason Bochy is thriving in the game he treasures. They say his ability to set ego aside, his dry and often self-skewering humor, his consistency and the way he places faith in others have won him the respect and hard work of his players.

Players' manager

The San Francisco Giants take on the Arizona Diamondbacks at AT&T Park in San Francisco, Calif., on Saturday, August 28, 2010.

The San Francisco Giants take on the Arizona Diamondbacks at AT&T Park in San Francisco, Calif., on Saturday, August 28, 2010.

Photo: Chad Ziemendorf, The Chronicle

Photo: Chad Ziemendorf, The Chronicle

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The San Francisco Giants take on the Arizona Diamondbacks at AT&T Park in San Francisco, Calif., on Saturday, August 28, 2010.

The San Francisco Giants take on the Arizona Diamondbacks at AT&T Park in San Francisco, Calif., on Saturday, August 28, 2010.

Photo: Chad Ziemendorf, The Chronicle

S.F. Giants' Bruce Bochy has humble approach

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Bochy, whose team has a two games to one lead in the National League Championship Series with Philadelphia, won't rip those players in public when they make mistakes. In television and radio interviews, he can come across as almost impassive.

But those who know him say the opposite is true: He is consumed with baseball and with figuring out how to win. It's just that communicating with the media isn't his priority, especially if it compromises his relationship with players.

They say Bochy is a fitting manager for a squad that includes eccentric personalities and earned the motto "torture" with its by-a-whisker victories. Bochy never doubts he can win, nor does he expect things to come easy - a lesson from his childhood and his playing days.

"He's like this, straight ahead," said Tim Flannery, Bochy's third-base coach, holding his right arm in front of him in the Giants' dugout. "When it gets down to pressure time, this is when he's at his best. He doesn't panic, and it translates into the players not panicking.

"What he wants you to do is play hard between the lines. He knows how hard the game is to play, and how hard it was for him to play."

But Bochy's journey toward becoming a "players' manager" - a term many Giants use to refer to him - started even earlier than his own journeyman career as a catcher, said his sister, Terry Bochy, a retired federal customs agent in Melbourne, Fla. She said Bochy carries on the qualities of his late father and mother.

Sergeant and a fan

He was born in France and was one of four children raised, nomadically, by a military father who was strict and goal-driven. Army Sgt. Major Gus Bochy hated complacency. He wanted his kids to be well-rounded, to be the best at what they did, and to know that their actions reflected on the family name.

Gus Bochy was also an avid fan of baseball, and in his home there was almost always a game on the television or the radio. He wanted his sons not just to play the game but to respect it and learn lessons from its intricacies.

"I don't mean this in a negative way," Terry Bochy said, "but one of the boys could hit a home run and he would talk about the pitch count."

Bruce's mother, Melrose, had a softer touch. She was "our rescuer," Terry said. "She would take up for us. She was our defender."

That, she says, may be how her brother developed a gift for listening to people and encouraging them. She recalled the time that Bruce, as a fifth-grader in Virginia, befriended a troubled boy who was a misfit in the neighborhood and at school.

"The principal called my dad. She was concerned about Bruce," Terry said. "My dad had a talk with him and Bruce said, 'Well, he doesn't have any friends.' "

Quiet leader

Bochy's family settled down in Melbourne, where he graduated from high school before accepting a partial scholarship at nearby Brevard Community College. By the end of his sophomore year he had met his future wife and led the school to a state championship.

His coach at the time, Jack Kenworthy, recalls a gawky, quiet young man whom others tended to follow.

"I got the feeling that players on my team, before they would do anything, would look and see what Boch was doing," Kenworthy said. "It was nothing he did outwardly. It was just the presence of leadership."

Drafted by the Houston Astros in 1975, Bochy launched a career that included stints with three major-league teams, six minor-league stops and winters playing ball in Venezuela, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic.

From 1978 to 1987, he had memorable moments - he got a hit in his only at-bat in the 1984 World Series, and he was behind the plate for the Padres the next season when Pete Rose of the Cincinnati Reds set the record for career hits. But the 154 at-bats he had his rookie year were his most ever in a season.

"I think it made him who he is today," his wife said. "When things don't come easy for you, you have to be that much more determined. It was a struggle for him every year. Very few times did he go into spring training knowing he would make the team, and that's a big load when you have a wife and a child."

Sly humor

Those who played with Bochy say he had a good understanding of the game and how to handle his pitchers, and a wicked sense of humor off the diamond that remains one of his trademarks.

His notoriously huge head - he reportedly wears a size 8 3/4 cap - forced him to ferry a custom-made batting helmet from team to team, painting over it each time. It also made him the target of jokes.

Hall of Fame reliever Goose Gossage recalled how Bochy became known to some Padres as "Big Buck Boch." During an offseason hunt at Gossage's ranch in Colorado, some teammates nailed a stuffed deer head to an aspen tree, then sent Bochy up a road toward it at dawn.

"My foreman yells, 'Big Buck, Boch!' " Gossage said. "He gets out and starts shooting, I think three times, before he figures out it's a joke. He dropped about a box of shells trying to load that rifle - his fingers were so big."

But Bochy could also dish it out.

Another time, Gossage said, pitcher Ed Whitson got lost on the ranch during a snowy winter, ended up on a highway many miles away, and had to pay a stranger to drive him back. That night, Whitson's buddies razzed him until he left dinner in a huff.

"The next morning at breakfast, all you can hear is forks hitting plates. No one is talking," Gossage said. "And then Boch all of a sudden says, 'Hey Whit, you got your cab money?' We almost fell out of our chairs. That was Boch."

Catcher to coach

It is common for catchers to become coaches. As Giants' backup catcher Eli Whiteside observed recently, the man behind the plate has to think about every aspect of the game at all times.

Bochy was named San Diego's manager in 1995, then won the division the next year. Two years later, he took the team to the World Series, but was swept by the Yankees.

He became known for wringing the best out of players. Still, after the Padres won their division in 2005 and 2006, the organization made Bochy available to other teams, and Giants general manager Brian Sabean quickly scooped him up.

At that time, Giants baseball orbited around Bonds. Not only was the slugger closing in on Hank Aaron's all-time home run record, but he was dogged by the question of whether he was using performance-enhancing drugs.

"We had a lot of media in the clubhouse and a lot of distractions," said Peter Magowan, who at the time was the Giants' managing general partner. "He was the type of manager who could manage in that environment."

In the ensuing four years, the Giants finished fifth in the National League West, then fourth, third and first.

Bochy is no micromanager, with players or with coaches, and forces everyone to take responsibility for their role on the team. He is direct and honest - "He's not going to blow smoke" at players, said retired pitcher and Giants announcer Mike Krukow - but he also gives those players a distance, generally staying out of the clubhouse and off the team bus.

Still, Flannery said, some of Bochy's best work comes in the back of airplanes.

"He'll go get himself in a card game with three or four guys," Flannery said. "They get to see he's a guy you can trust, that you can talk to, and who understands what it's like to be a player.

Third baseman Pablo Sandoval said Bochy has supported him in his struggles at the plate this year, telling him that even his old friend Tony Gwynn, the longtime Padre now in the Hall of Fame, went through prolonged slumps.

"He gives you the support if you're doing good or if you're struggling," Sandoval said. "He'll be there every minute."

Deflecting attention

On the afternoon that Sandoval spoke, the Giants took batting practice in preparation for the playoffs. Bochy stepped into the dugout to address a gathering of reporters and said, "Where do you want me?"

He is a large man, nearly 6 feet 4, and when he lumbers on his tender knees - one of which will eventually need to be replaced, his wife says - it looks like he is still wearing a catcher's bulky shin guards. The lashes of his right eye are white, the result of being exposed to a caustic chemical when he was a teenager working for a furniture refinisher.

He took questions and tossed back short answers.

Asked if the team was ready to deal with high-pressure games, he said, "It's been kind of our way, really." What about his support for expanding instant replay in baseball? "It's all about getting it right," he said.

As he walked toward the field, he was asked what the Giants' division-clinching win over the Padres on the final day of the season meant to him - and he quickly deflected the answer away from his own accomplishment.

"It's so satisfying," Bochy said. "I'm happier for the players, how hard they've worked, and for the front office and the fans. To see the players jumping around - it's a very emotional time for me. I know how badly they wanted it."

The Bruce Bochy file

Born April 16, 1955, in Landes de Bussac, France.

Met wife Kim when he was a 19-year-old student at Brevard Community College in Cocoa Beach, Fla. She is now a 54-year-old volunteer doula at UC San Diego Medical Center.

Made his major-league debut in 1978. Batted .239 with 26 home runs over nine seasons with the Houston Astros, New York Mets and San Diego Padres.

Won two league titles in four years as a minor-league manager.

Holds 1,274-1,300 record managing the Padres (1995-2006) and the Giants (2007-10), with five division titles. Named National League manager of the year in 1996.

Has two grown sons. Greg, 31, played college baseball and is now an EMT firefighter in San Diego. Brett, 23, is a pitcher in the Giants' system and is recovering from arm surgery.

Lives in San Diego and in a condominium across the street from AT&T Park that was the home of his predecessor as Giants manager, Felipe Alou.